Mark R. Rank

Objectives In order to improve health outcomes, the federal government allocates hundreds of billions of annual dollars to individual states in order to further the well-being of its citizens. This study examines the impact of such federal intergovernmental transfers on reducing state-level infant mortality rates. Setting Annual data are collected from all 50 US states between 2004 and 2013. Participants Entire US population under the age of 1 year between 2004 and 2013. Primary and secondary outcome measures State-level infant mortality rate, neonatal mortality rate and postneonatal mortality rate. Results Using a fixed effects regression model to control for unmeasurable differences between states, the impact of federal transfers on state-level infant mortality rates is estimated. After controlling for differences across states, increases in per capita federal transfers are significantly associated with lower infant, neonatal and postneonatal mortality rates. Holding all other variables constant, a $200 increase in the amount of federal transfers per capita would save one child’s life for every 10 000 live births. Conclusions Considerable debate exists regarding the role of federal transfers in improving the well-being of children and families. These findings indicate that increases in federal transfers are strongly associated with reductions in infant mortality rates. Such benefits should be carefully considered when state officials are deciding whether to accept or reject federal funds.

Inequality has become a subject of intense interest over the past few years. Much has been written about how rising levels of inequality are affecting the life chances of many Americans. Yet despite this interest, relatively little has been written about the process of inequality during the elderly years. Therefore, The End Game: How Inequality Shapes Our Final Years by Corey Abramson is a welcome addition to the overall literature on social and economic inequality.

A relatively new strategy for studying the prevalence of poverty in America is to analyze it as a potential life course event. This approach is used in order to examine the likelihood of both income and asset poverty for individuals between the ages of 60 and 90. Nearly half of all elderly Americans will encounter at least 1 year of poverty or near poverty across these ages. In addition, 58% of those between the ages of 60 and 84 will at some point fail to have enough liquid assets to allow them to weather an unanticipated expense or downturn in income. The policy and practice implications of these findings are discussed.

This article extends the emerging body of life course research on poverty by empirically identifying the incidence, chronicity, and age pattern of American poverty and how these dimensions have changed during the period 1968-2000. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we construct a series of life tables that estimate the risk of poverty for adults during their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s, and compare these estimates for Americans in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Our empirical results suggest that the risk of acute poverty increased substantially, particularly in the 1990s. This observed increase was especially pronounced for individuals in their 20s, 30s, and 40s; for all age groups with respect to extreme poverty; and for white males. On the other hand, the risk of chronic poverty declined during the 1990s (as measured by the percentage of the poor who experienced five or more years of poverty within a 10-year interval). The results in this article tell a very different story than the Census Bureau's yearly cross-sectional rates, which have shown little overall change in the U.S. poverty rate during this 30-year period. In contrast, a life course approach reveals a rising economic risk of acute poverty for individuals, one that is consistent with recent observations and research suggesting that a growing number of Americans will eventually find themselves in an economically precarious position.

Objective To estimate the lifetime risk that an American child will reside in a household receiving food stamps and, as a result, will encounter poverty and a heightened exposure to food insecurity. Design Thirty years of longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics survey data set. Setting Nationally representative sample of the US population. Participants Approximately 90 000 childhood years of information are pooled together to create a series of life tables that span the ages of 1 to 20 years. Main Outcome Measure Self-reporting measure of whether survey households received the Food Stamp Program during the prior year. Results Between the ages of 1 to 20 years, nearly half (49.2%) of all American children will, at some point, reside in a household that receives food stamps. Households in need of the program use it for relatively short periods but are also likely to return to the program at several points during the childhood years. Race, parental education, and head of household's marital status exert a strong influence on the proportion of children residing in a food stamp household. Conclusions American children are at a high risk of encountering a spell during which their families are in poverty and food insecure as indicated through their use of food stamps. Such events have the potential to seriously jeopardize a child's overall health.